On Edinburgh tram extension, city council is trying to play public for fools – John McLellan

Edinburgh Council needs to acknowledge the effect the pandemic is going to have on the city’s tram extension, writes John McLellan.

A tram on Edinburgh's Princes Street before the coronavirus outbreak struck (Picture: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)

There has been much talk in the last week about “grown-up” conversations, and I’d be surprised if many people expected anything less of their politicians, whether it’s about controlling a deadly disease or any other aspect of public policy locally or nationally.

Public statements about the Edinburgh Tram completion project are a perfect example of the public being treated like children, given the project relies entirely on revenue generated by Lothian Buses to get going and every empty bus shows the company is in deep trouble.

Voters were assured the project would be entirely self-funding because it was based on future fare receipts and maybe over time the passenger projections will be reached, but in the short to medium term, it’s a different story entirely.

After six weeks of lockdown and more to come, public transport is losing thousands because such fare-paying passengers as there are won’t pay for the fuel, never mind all the other costs. Yet the tram completion business case relies on Lothian Buses generating enough profit to pay £7m for the next three years to the Newhaven scheme as well as maintain the normal dividend of up to £6m a year.

Nobody doubts the city administration’s determination to finish the line, and given contracts have been signed it could be as costly to halt as to plough on, but to imply that as soon as lockdown is over it will be business as usual is playing the Edinburgh public for fools.

As late as January, no-one saw the coronavirus pandemic coming and no construction project anywhere in the world is going to be completed according to a schedule planned pre-outbreak, so what is to be lost by being open about this project now?

It is true that the rump of the £207m budget for the three miles of track through Leith would come from borrowing against future fare receipts, and borrowing is likely to remain very cheap for a long time to come, but it is patently not the case that Lothian Buses will be able to hand over anything like the £13m the council demanded this year or next.

Not only that, but last year the council was told there was a 38 per cent chance of the project hitting £257m, so what are the odds now?

The chances of a second wave if restrictions are eased are high so people are not going to immediately pack public transport as they did before. And tour buses without tourists? The Lothian Buses business model will be upside down for years.

But what has the council got to say? As soon as the Evening News story about the tram cash problems hit the streets, SNP leader Adam McVey was on Twitter reassuring us that all was well. “To be clear: Tram construction is well under way, there is no doubt hanging over the extension. It remains a crucial project for our Capital’s sustainable future. The worksite will reopen when restrictions are lifted as planned.”

Most of that may be technically true, although “well under way” is a matter of opinion, but at what cost? A further comment was a little more enlightening: “It’s important to note that the project is largely funded through borrowing repaid by future tram revenues, so any impact to the council’s budget now is limited,” he said.

Limited? Contrast that with remarks in February last year just before his administration pushed through the project, which referred to “a strong business case for taking trams to Newhaven which – crucially – does not divert funding from other council services”.

So it has gone from having no impact on council services – which we in the Conservative group always argued was bunkum – to having a “limited” impact on the budget. So which is it?

The ‘all right on the night’ approach also undermines a potential case for emergency Scottish Government funding; the tram should always have been classed as a national infrastructure project rather than a grandiose addition to the local bus service but if problems need to be acknowledged at a time when every other vital service is desperate for cash.

A £50m hole has already been identified in Edinburgh’s budget, and the longer lockdown lasts and the more businesses struggle, the less taxation and business rates revenue there will be to fill it.

There is an urgent need, and indeed an opportunity, to be open and honest about the problems big projects are likely to face, but that means the SNP-Labour administration has to change the habits of its lifetime and start treating the public like the grown-ups they always were.

Garden waste before glass recycling

Praise where it’s due, even though it took the suspension of the garden waste and glass collections, Edinburgh’s bin service during the crisis seems to have been smooth; so smooth that this week the bottles uplift has restarted.

And gardeners will be very pleased that the brown bin collections will return from May 11, although why it was this way round has not been properly explained. After all, it’s relatively easy to take a few bottles to a supermarket recycling centre, and those signed up for the garden bin service had already paid £25 in advance.

According to the discussion at last Wednesday’s council leaders’ meeting, supermarket glass recycling points were full up, so we must be very lucky indeed because on the last two occasions we’ve taken our bottles to the Colinton Mains Tesco it wasn’t full at all.

Grudge against private communal gardens?

I’ve never bought any of the “no-one is interested in politics” shtick when not a day goes by without clear political fault-lines running through every utterance, policy paper or public announcement, but I have to take my hat off to Green MSP Andy Wightman for his request that private communal gardens be opened up to the public during lockdown.

The gardens are private to those who live nearby and pay for their upkeep and as most are in the middle of town, no-one else is about to use them. But why pass up on the opportunity to ramp up a long-standing, grudge-driven campaign?

No exams for two years will widen attainment gap

Calls by teaching unions to suspend next year’s examinations should sound alarm bells in every household with secondary school students, and it’s very strange to want something stopped which is a year away rather than finding ways to make that unnecessary.

Fears about a widening attainment gap have been well expressed in recent days, with better-off families better able to assist with home learning than less privileged households, and also the extent to which private schools have been able to cope.

Effectively closing the examination system for two years will only widen that gap, and would see an exodus of the private sector to A levels or the International Baccalaureate, which many already teach.

The unions claim to be concerned about the effect on teachers and students alike, but it looks very like a lot more of the former and less of the latter.

A hopeful new student flats plan

Planning applications have begun to pick up in the last week, though most are small domestic alterations unlikely to cause much of a stir, but one of the more substantial was an office-hotel-student flats scheme in Haymarket.

If successful it would still be a couple of years away before being open for business and it’s possible the hotel trade will be fully back on its feet, especially if fewer short-term lets are available thanks to tighter legislation and the switch to long-term lets.

But the demand for purpose-built student accommodation could take years to recover, if indeed it ever does. Universities are certainly very downbeat about the prospects as the economic impact of the pandemic cuts the number of overseas students able to spend £20,000 on a course before board, lodging and travel is considered.